Why are some blogs incredibly popular? Why do great blogs get barely noticed? Why do some pretty banal looking things get millions of hits when something which is bordering on genius is ignored? It’s nice to think that these things just reflect lousy taste on the part of the public, but the truth is rather more blunt. Some of the best bloggers ignore basic rules. Some of the least impressive blogs in terms of actual content don’t ignore those rules, like SEO.

Blogging history- A brief dose of a tough market

The days of the “messianic blog” lasted for about six months in the late 90s. At the end of those six months the blog market was saturated. From the ashes arose the specialist blogs. Technical writers moved in, as did expert writers in particular markets. The blog market became highly diversified in a couple of years. Even the stodgy mainstream media, having eventually learned how to spell the word “blog” started running a few blogs, then multiples.

You will have noticed that this was anything but a random process. The markets demanded blogs, and got them. The bloggers swarmed around these markets like wasps around sweets. The other types of blogs got buried in the stampede.

It wasn’t a matter of justice to good bloggers. It was business, and it was good business for both writers and markets. Therefore it was always going to succeed. The most popular blogs in this market were the high copy value, high information value blogs.

Blogging markets

Specialist bloggers target their materials to their particular fields of expertise. They write to a specific audience. This is basic marketing, known as “positioning”. Non-specialist bloggers are providing entertainment, as much as materials. Their style is simple, but it’s still targeted to a particular audience, at that audience’s baseline level.

Popularity as a commodity

When you’re reading a blog, what do you want to get out of reading it? Which blogs are popular with you, and why? Popularity is the market share of a blog. The blog’s market is its subject matter. Some blogs cover a lot of topics, loosely based on business, finance, fashion, etc, but the information is all relevant to the audience. The huge numbers of hits are no coincidence. The blog is excellent value for readers. This popularity is a very salable commodity in terms of revenue, affiliates, and other money making options for the blog.

The technicalities of a popular blog

If you’re a good writer, media person or graphic artist, you can use the basic technical aspects of search engine optimisation and high value content to get a great audience. You can raise the profile of your blog through “brand exposure”, sowing your links strategically around the world, and make sure your content is better than anyone else in your field.

Focus your blog content. Find your best subjects, where your materials are strongest, and where you can produce materials almost effortlessly because of your expertise, and target that audience. You’ll get your readers, and your blog will become popular very quickly.

Backlinks from blog comments, be they dofollow or nofollow have value in the search engines; so don’t forget nofollow links as they also hold some weight with Google (depending on where those links are coming from). Commenting is a legit way to get backlinks; even big companies are now getting in on the act.

Commenting is good, spam is not

But alas, with the good comes the bad. I’ve seen many dofollow sites getting spammed to death (literally). The spam gets to the point many of the pages cease to even load properly and the blog owners either turn off their comments or mass delete almost everything after a while.

You may have seen those comments before, either one liners to “thank” the blog owner or some copy paste comments which commentators spew on a dozen other sites (it saves them time) and loaded with dozens, even hundreds of links to questionable pharmacy, shoes, bags, jewelry, and what-have-you sites. All this spam necessitates moderation, but moderation brings up other questions as well; are there any good moderation guidelines to follow?

Since I can’t speak for other blog owners, I’ll just list down what works for me in deciding whether to approve a comment or not:

• If the commentator is linking to warez/adult/one page/shady sites I usually don’t approve the comment. This also applies for sites that look as though they might be shut down anytime. You wouldn’t want to link to sites that could be penalized by Google – like sites with copied content, or sites that are here today, gone tomorrow, cos your blog might be the one to get penalized next.
• Normally I do not approve one liner comments, but this is not a fixed rule. Comments like, “Thanks for the great post,” normally won’t get approved. Hey, I don’t think it’s that hard to read the blogger’s post before commenting.
• I generally frown on “outsourced” comments, unless the commentator makes a good comment. The thought of “comment packages” doesn’t sit too well with me, but again, it’s not a hard and fast rule for me.
• Anything rude, profane, or negatively unconstructive also won’t get approved.
• Copy-paste comments which can be spotted on other sites and are clearly recycled, won’t get approved.
• Keywords in the name field – I guess I go on a case by case basis.

Yep, blog moderation might be a killjoy but the fact is, it’s essential. I’ve seen very liberal blogs and very conservative blogs. Blogs with dofollow but hardly approve any comments (you have to wonder why they allow comments in the first place). Dofollow blogs with auto-approve that get spammed to death (Not good). Blogs that strictly won’t allow any keywords in the name field. Blogs that switch back to nofollow after promoting themselves as dofollow. All sorts.

At the end of the day, you have to decide where you want your blog to be, since no two blogs will ever or should be, the same. Blog commenting is still a relevant SEO strategy available for all that doesn’t cost a dime; let’s keep it that way as long as we can.

Being a regular poster at some forums, I definitely notice countless newbie bloggers starting out with Blogger every day. While Blogger is free, the downside is many new blogs on Blogger get relegated into a sandbox state at the beginning, which means you don’t appear on anywhere in Google that gets seen by people, except perhaps for obscure terms or keywords (that nobody ever looks up).

So this is the downside of free hosting sites. They might be free, but sites hosted on them typically have a harder time getting visitors during the beginning. At least that is what I notice. Not only that, but free hosting sites may have “fine print” clauses that take a percentage of any ad income you may receive from your “free” site.

So before you embark on your blogging adventure, it is important to get a good domain name; even if you have to register or buy one. Yet, I notice many folks never want to spend money on getting a domain name, but don’t think twice about getting a new PDA! I know I wouldn’t want to start a blog on a subdomain which I don’t even own, as would be the case with a free host site like Blogger. I want to own my site. How about you?

It’s no secret; all the search engines give a slight preference to a good and (preferably old) .com domain. While other TLDs can also work out fine, there is a slight edge to .com. So always get a good .com (if you can).

A couple pointers

Is domain investing profitable? Yes it is. Domain investing can pay off handsomely if you know what makes for good names, and are prepared to invest money and time on it. While virtually all the premium domains have long been taken up, it is anything but closed off. Due to the recession, many domain prices have dropped this year alone, so for a few hundred bucks, you can become the owner of a good domain (even if not premium), and begin planning your website or blog on it. There are many good domains that cost less than an Xbox, so while today you can’t hand register any more premium domains, you can certainly buy your way in, slowly.

All is not lost if you can’t spare the quid required. A common fallacy is that all the good domains are gone; but this is not strictly true now. In my observation, many domains have been dropped this past year alone, most likely due to the recession. So if you search hard enough, you might still be able to uncover some nice names for the price of a hand reg!

Buying or selling domains is also easy. There are many domain selling sites which act as brokers for domain sellers and buyers; some of which I’ve used to sell or buy domains in the past are:

• Sedo
• BuyDomains
• Namecheap Marketplace
• Digital Point and NamePros forums.

As this year draws to a close and a new one begins, if you’ve been planning to start a blog or website, how about starting off on the right foot with a good domain? Have a great year ahead!

Well, apparently it got “updated” recently, after more than a year of “hibernation.” The last “valid” post was way back in March 2008. After that, the former owner Tung Do (Small Potato) sold his blog to a Czech guy who let the whole blog go to sleep. Since then, the blog was not updated (until now that is).

But did that affect the blog in any big way? No siree. It still maintains a very strong Google Page Rank of 7, and a great Alexa rank of 28,000. That must amount to a lot of visitors each month. Now tell me, how many blogs out there have such strong stats? Especially if they have been “hibernating” for so long?

Another blog that is doing remarkably well even in “hibernation” is JohnTP.com. Last posting was in August 2008, and that’s a long time ago. Despite that, JohnTP maintains thousands of RSS readers, a decent Page Rank of 3, and an Alexa of just over 29,000! I think the blogger, John, must have moved on to other projects since, but he should be happy to know that his blog is still doing great.

So whoever says blogs need regular updating has obviously never seen the likes of these 2 blogs (or some others out there). And it just goes to show that if you have a strong blog with thousands and thousands of backlinks (from the themes released by those 2 blogs in the past), you can pretty much let the blog “sleep,” and it will (still) keep going strong. Seems to go against every grain of blogging thought – I’m amazed.

First of all, can blogging make money online? The answer is yes. But can you make a lot of money online by blogging? The short answer is no. You might make some dough here and there to pay your bills, but forget about getting rich from this. According to statistics, 95% of bloggers don’t succeed (depending on how you define success). Be realistic, and you’ll be happier and healthier for it. Or, you can break your back trying.

Basically, making money online with blogs is all about traffic. Haven’t we heard that before? If you’re trying to make good money with a blog, frankly speaking, we are looking at a few hundred thousand to more than a million unique visitors a month. A few thousand (or ten thousand) visitors a month is what most bloggers get. I’m not talking about making a few hundred dollars a month here and there (which most don’t even make). There are better ways to make a buck besides PPC, but that’s for another day, and it doesn’t suit every blog, or blogger.

A lot of people seem to think blogs are the best way to make money online when they are not. Love them or hate them, blogs are ubiquitous; maybe the reason why the failure rate is so high. Anyone can start a blog nowadays, even kids and grandmas. But not everyone is cut out for blogging at a pro level. For every successful blog out there, there are so many thousands of unsuccessful ones. That’s not a very encouraging statistic, but it’s the truth.

How many blogs are started every day and how many are abandoned? It boggles the mind. In a lot of cases, blogs do not reach their true earning potential with the amount of traffic they get. Because most blogs rely on PPC like Adsense, they are going to need a lot of traffic just to make some coin, and there is only just so much (quality traffic) going around. In simple terms, people who are inclined to buy something, and this is not some bottomless bucket like many new bloggers assume.

A blog is but one of millions of other blogs. It takes a lot of work, talent, and luck to make a blog good. A blog needs to be updated regularly. Generating new ideas all the time is tough. The most successful blogs on the Web have multiple bloggers at the helm.

Consider the present time as well. Pre-2008, making money online was easier. You could surf and get paid for it. You could write sponsored reviews and get paid for it. You could sell crappy maps of your country and make loads from it. But times change. Even Google, the biggest company on the Internet, is having a tough time with the economy and all. While there were only less than a hundred million sites in 2006; today, there are probably more than a billion sites. And today we have Google Earth, so who needs maps?

It’s difficult even to get a nice domain name nowadays. If you’re serious on making money online, be willing to invest some money to get one. Buy it if you must. And get proper hosting for it. There are no more fairy tale rags-to-riches stories any more. So quit dreaming because it’s only going to get harder from here!

Think of making money online as a pie. This pie sure isn’t getting bigger. There are laws of supply and demand at work. Are we going to reach absolute saturation point one day?

Sure, new markets will open up, and new trends will emerge. New ways or methods of marketing will take over from the old ones. Maybe Twitter is one of these? But the days of successful mom and pop publishing are probably numbered, going by present trends. The difficulty quotient for the regular Joe-Web-success-wannabe has definitely gone up, not down.

A word of advice. Be wary of dubious schemes selling you easy money with little or no work. Just a little objectivity. There are no shortcuts, neither guarantees. That’s the bad news part. And it’s only going to get harder. There is no such thing as working an online business for 20 minutes a day, and spending the rest of the day playing golf or watching TV. Did I just say serious bloggers should treat their blogging like a second job, or business?

Now, the good news is you can make some money with the required effort applied. You need to have critical thinking. An online business is really no different than any brick-and-mortar business; all the basic rules still apply, albeit in a different setting. The same applies for blogging. Yes, it’s possible to make money online with blogging, but it’s just not as easy as you think! Sometimes, a reality check helps.

I could recall many blogs being dofollow in the past. Most are nofollow now. Wonder why?

The reason many dofollow blogs revert to nofollow is because they can’t deal with the amount of junky comments, in many cases, “outsourced” comments that are usually low quality as well. Comment spamming is being taken to a whole new level with some parties offering their “services” to leave comments for the website owners at ALL the dofollow blogs they can get their hands on. And this is getting out of hand. Most bloggers would rather have one sincere comment over 20 crap comments.

Secondly, the “names” of the commenters are usually pretty much stuffed with keywords, and the website of the commenter (usually) has no relevance to the blog’s theme. The main thing I notice on all those nofollow blogs is the comments at least – are not stuffed with keywords. They sound more “genuine.” They are just usually the “names” of the person commenting. That’s how comments should be.

Stuffing your “name” with keywords should be a no go. As is linking to a half baked website that just got started yesterday! Nobody knows if the site is going to be taken down tomorrow. Google and all the search engines are always developing ways to determine “bad neighborhoods.” Would sites linking to them get penalized? What would happen to a site having many outgoing links to “bad neighborhoods” or low quality sites? Just something to be aware of.

In light of all these, isn’t it any wonder there are so few dofollow blogs in existence these days? At the same time, many existing dofollow blogs have all but tightened their criteria in allowing comments to pass. Now can you blame them?

Maybe it’s easier to just go back to nofollow.